Will Robots Take Our Jobs?

40 years from now, grappling with the fallout of an automated economy might be the most important economic issue of our time Today, however, worrying about robots taking over the economy feels more like an intellectual exercise. There’s no need for an artificial crisis over artificial intelligence.

I’m mostly interested in these issues because they seem like a useful frame to discuss the long-term trend of less and less income going to labor, and in broader strokes, the way in which our society has become a massive machine for generating wealth for those at the top. I find the “income inequality” conversation to be frustrating on a variety of levels, in large part because it is so well worn. I’m trying to address how we think our society is supposed to function, and what happens when one of the basic planks starts to degrade. Contrary to Thompson and Yglesias, I don’t think it’s too early to think things through, even if these problems don’t start to affect us in mass in the near future. We have a habit of deciding problems are problems too late rather than too soon.